The buzzword ‘New Culture Movement’: intellectual marketing strategies in China in the 1910s and 1920s
The buzzword ‘New Culture Movement’: intellectual marketing strategies in China in the 1910s and 1920s
This article argues that China's New Culture Movement was not a movement, but a buzzword. It was coined by little-known intellectuals in the summer of 1919 and then used by them to sell their own, long-standing agendas. Even though they declared famous intellectuals such as Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu to be the movement's ‘centre’ and inspiration, some of them were as, if not more, important in shaping the discourses surrounding the expression ‘New Culture Movement’. Drawing upon newspapers, journals, and conference reports, this article shows this using the example of two case studies, both of which marketed their agendas as ‘New Culture Movement’: the Jiangsu Educational Association, which was a political-educational group in Jiangsu; and Chinese Christian intellectuals around the Apologetic Group in Beijing.
Regarding the New Culture Movement as a buzzword addresses some puzzles about it. It explains why it has proven difficult to agree on a starting and endpoint for the New Culture Movement. It also illustrates why such a huge variety of ideas, whose complexity has become ever more evident in recent scholarship, was subsumed under the one headline of ‘New Culture Movement’.
1253-1282
Forster, Elisabeth
5b83dcba-7458-48bc-bd25-e2833d542bb4
September 2017
Forster, Elisabeth
5b83dcba-7458-48bc-bd25-e2833d542bb4
Forster, Elisabeth
(2017)
The buzzword ‘New Culture Movement’: intellectual marketing strategies in China in the 1910s and 1920s.
Modern Asian Studies, 51 (5), .
(doi:10.1017/S0026749X15000414).
Abstract
This article argues that China's New Culture Movement was not a movement, but a buzzword. It was coined by little-known intellectuals in the summer of 1919 and then used by them to sell their own, long-standing agendas. Even though they declared famous intellectuals such as Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu to be the movement's ‘centre’ and inspiration, some of them were as, if not more, important in shaping the discourses surrounding the expression ‘New Culture Movement’. Drawing upon newspapers, journals, and conference reports, this article shows this using the example of two case studies, both of which marketed their agendas as ‘New Culture Movement’: the Jiangsu Educational Association, which was a political-educational group in Jiangsu; and Chinese Christian intellectuals around the Apologetic Group in Beijing.
Regarding the New Culture Movement as a buzzword addresses some puzzles about it. It explains why it has proven difficult to agree on a starting and endpoint for the New Culture Movement. It also illustrates why such a huge variety of ideas, whose complexity has become ever more evident in recent scholarship, was subsumed under the one headline of ‘New Culture Movement’.
Text
Forster, The buzzword New Culture Movement (open access version)
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 31 August 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 21 September 2017
Published date: September 2017
Additional Information:
This article is based on a chapter of my doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford, funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Edwin Arnold Scholarship of University College. I would like to thank my supervisor, Peter Ditmanson, for his invaluable help with my work. I am also grateful to Liu Qian, Margaret Hillenbrand, Leigh Jenco, Rana Mitter, and the reviewers of this article for their very helpful advice.
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 423728
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/423728
ISSN: 0026-749X
PURE UUID: 2f350c3c-8693-447d-b48a-59575ca66023
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 28 Sep 2018 16:30
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 21:54
Export record
Altmetrics
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics